Quietly Enjoying ...

...wintery forest walks, foraging and christmas preparations with the family...

...in the meadow at dusk collecting willow
 

... homemade wreath making

... fun in the woods

...tree decorating (love this bauble)

Feeling very lucky to have what I have this year. I hope you are enjoying the Christmas build up too. X

Joining in with made by hand on a little bird told me craft

Feeling Snuggly

So after feeling so totally inspired for some time on the crafty front, the autumnal days and dark wintery evenings have been making me think about knitting again.

So that’s what I’ve been doing... well that and some Christmas crafting planning. I don’t know about anyone else, but whilst I publically curse the fact that there has been Christmas stuff in the shops for the past month, there’s a little bit of me that inwardly leaps for joy at the fact that Christmas is just around the corner! Bit to early for posting about Christmas though so more on that at some other point!

It was mums birthday not too long ago. I spied this gorgeous point 5 Colinette yarn…

and turned it into this snuggly high neck cuff (please excuse the dodgy ‘its me’ shot – wasn't feeling my best on the day of that photo)...

Love LOVE high neck stuff. So simple yet it turns into snuggly loveliness. Perfect for easing me back into the crafty groove.

Winter Re-purposing

I did a bit of skirt hitching up the other day having decided that they were all suddenly too long (!?!) and went back to some old bits and pieces I enjoyed making last namely Mug Huggies and Big Broach Buttons. So the off cuts of my winter skirts have now become:

My coffee mugs new jacket (the cord feels really luxurious and is totally right for the winter)

My coat’s new badge

If I didn’t feel like I was hoarding junk and stuff that really, I just want to give to the charity shop (in terms of old clothes etc) I could quite get into this whole re-purposing thing!

Old Fashioned, but due to make a comeback I’m sure – Muffs!

A day off work means plenty of crafting and blogging. Blissful!

In December I was up in Soho in one of my favouritest (is that even a word?) cloth shops looking for inspiration for 2010 Christmas presents. I wanted something that would feel and look special but that would ultimately be enjoyable and not ridiculously time consuming to make. Now I love the Cloth House shops as they are like sweet shops for adults; pricier than some places totally, but the patterns and range of cloths are of a fantastic quality. I tend to go around prodding and poking materials to get a good idea of what they feel like and everything stopped when I came across the most enormous rolls of a fantastic chocolately red with silvery sheen faux fur. Luscious - I could have happily made a bed out of it!

Anyway with the snow and the cold and the fact that I had the nicest fabric around I figured that a muff would be the perfect way forwards. After a reasonable amount of searching and trialing I found these instructions from burdastyle the most straight forward and accurate.

This is how they turned out...

I did make a few additions/ changes of my own though:

1. Instead of using a lining fabric for the inside I just used a second layer of the fur. What’s the point in using the lovely furry fabric if you hands don’t get the tactile benefit!

2. I ended up hand stitching both ends shut. In the end my sewing machine wasn’t quite heavy duty enough to sew two layers of fur together. You cant tell it was hand stitched which is a bonus.

3. I added a length of ribbon to each end of the muff as I was sewing it up so that if you want to you can hang the muff around your neck.

As you can see the end result is quite pretty and really toasty for your hands. My mum LOVED hers and wore it out in the snow for our boxing day walk! Whilst they look quite classy without, I added a button detail to a couple of the muffs which gives them more of a vintage type feel.

If you are going to attempt one yourself my tops tips would be:

- If you have one of those olive sticks (kind of like cocktail sticks… but for olives) in the back of a kitchen drawer they are PERFECT of making sure you have no fur caught up in the stitching.

- If you are adding a detail like buttons or ribbon firstly make sure you work out where the seem ridge inside is going to be. Too high up/ low down and its annoying for your hands and secondly – make sure you have the fur facing in the right direction! In the prototype I kept for myself the fur is the wrong way up when using the ribbon – doh!